


knife-turn

by batshape



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, The Crossing of the Helcaraxë, animal death cw, finwean ladies week day 3: aredhel (with brief galadriel cameo), its the helcaraxe babey! they have had better days, subsequent content warning for gore and mentions of starvation, tip-toeing around the subject of terrible cousins like their lives depend on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26869999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape
Summary: Írissë set aside her knife, and lifted her sticky, freezing hands to her face.“How,” she demanded of him, fierce in the rough quiet of the words, “are you notangry?”:Of necessity, grief, and the usefulness of anger on the Helcaraxë.Finwëan Ladies Week: Day 3
Relationships: Aredhel & Fingon | Findekáno
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28
Collections: Finwëan Ladies Week 2020





	knife-turn

**Author's Note:**

> please do heed the content warning for gore in the tags. there are some (in depth) descriptions of field-dressing/gutting a dead animal throughout. it’s mostly standard hunter’s procedure for dressing a deer, with a step omitted here and there. there is also an instance of animal death, but it is brief and located within paragraphs nine and eleven
> 
> another note: the events of this fic take place while elenwë is still alive
> 
> credit for the name elempilin (quenya: “star arrow”) given where it is due, to realelvish.net

It was not Írissë’s horse that went first. But when it came time for such a thing, she did it herself.

“Would you like help?” her eldest brother asked, very quietly. He stood behind her and her too lean gelding, fur-lined hood pulled tight about his face, while the rest of them occupied themselves elsewhere. Írissë had not wanted an audience (though she recognized that the outcome of the deed was much more important than the doing of it, and to ask for privacy in anything at all was surely ridiculous now) but Findekáno was insistent. 

His horse, Írissë remembered, had been one of the first. 

This had not been strictly necessary, Írissë had thought then—the mare was a good mount, and might have been of use a bit longer before she became too thin or too frostbitten to be worth anything but slaughtering—but they had eaten other horses already, and Findekáno had been correct when he had demanded that, if Ñolofinwë’s own blood would not make sacrifices with the rest of them, what right did they have to expect it of their host?

Írissë said nothing. Findekáno began again: “Would you—” and she shook her head. 

She pressed her nose to Elempilin’s neck, and then subtly she drew her knife. Her thick mittens made the movement uncharacteristically clumsy, and she frowned. 

She thought she might have begun to weep now, prompted at the slight hindrance of her mittens to realization of what she was about to do, if not for the indignity, the  _ spoiledness  _ of it all. Not even Finno had wept—though he had not been able to dress nor butcher the thing himself, and this task had fallen to Írissë—and had Írissë not spent her whole life teasing him, calling him  _ soft?  _ Surely, surely, she could do this alone.

Elempilin snorted, very gently, as if in polite disagreement. Írissë laughed a bitter laugh.

Carefully, so as not to spook the horse, Írissë brought her mittens to her mouth, and removed them with her teeth. Then, with the things discarded on the ice (her brother retrieved them, swiftly, so they would not be too bloodied in the coming moment), Írissë murmured a quiet apology and slashed her knife across Elempilin’s throat.

Blood flooded over her bare hands, blissfully hot in the moment before it met the frigid air and cooled, thickened, made sticky her palms and slick her fingers. It spattered on the ice at her feet, melting the top sheen and freezing over again, marking quickly and callously the silent stretch of white.

Elempilin folded, lurching forward as his front legs buckled and prompting Írissë to leap back, so as not to be crushed beneath his toppling weight. He did not scream—he could not, for he had not enough time nor breath to do so—but rather he gasped, choked, and there was bright red gore cupped in Írissë’s hands. Elempilin crumpled to the ice and then, almost too quickly and too easily for an animal of his stature and temperament, Elempilin was dead.

Írissë heaved one dry, rattling sob.

“I am sorry,” Findekáno murmured, and he did not indicate that he was offering an embrace but Írissë clung to him for a moment anyway, smearing blood onto the sable-colored skin of his coat and gripping tight his forearm. “Írissë. I am very sorry.”

Írissë released him, and then she shook her head. “Do not be sorry,” she said waveringly, and lifted her chin. She shrugged. “He was a horse, not a kinsman. Given the decision, I would choose you over a hundred Elempilins.”

Her brother smiled, but it was a sad curve of his mouth. Perhaps this was because he could see the tears gathering on Írissë’s lashes, though he said nothing of it.

“That is a relief to hear you say,” Findekáno replied, aiming for cheerful teasing and falling dramatically short. Írissë sniffed, drawing the back of her hand across her cheeks to banish the collecting tears, and smeared cool blood across her face. “I have wondered before where I stood, in that exact hypothetical scenario.”

“Bastard,” Írissë condemned, but she too smiled weakly. She knelt on the ice and said softly, “I need to dress him. It.” A ragged breath. Elempilin was no more, and she would do well to realize that as quickly as possible. There were hungry people, hungry children—her little niece among them—that mattered more than Írissë’s beloved dead horse. “I need to dress the carcass.”

Findekáno knelt with her, and pressed her mittens to her bloodied hands. He murmured, “Take a moment.”

But Írissë did not know what to do with a moment. In a previous life, she might have prayed, might have given thanks, but Elempilin was hardly a spoil of a hunt and she could not bring herself to be grateful. He had known, she was sure of it, when she had pressed her useless apology to his neck and he had nickered gently, and she did not know what to  _ do  _ with that, nor with a moment.

Death had never been personal before. Death had never been quite real to her, because she had been silly and spoiled in Valinor and even Ñolofinwë had not succeeded in making her serious. But now, wherever Írissë dared to look, death was becoming terribly personal.

She did not know what to do with this new intimacy, nor this new seriousness. She was becoming something tempered with quiet ice, something else which understood horror and greeted it with a knife, and she did not like it.

Írissë gripped her hunting knife tightly between her brittle fingers. “We were fools,” she whispered, and her brother sighed.

“I do not know,” he murmured, and he drew his own knife and held it quietly in his hands. It was a silent offering of aid. “I think we were right.”

“That does not mean we were not—” Írissë snarled, and then faltered, and her brother looked at the knife in his hands, and then the knife in hers. Írissë felt always now as if she was balanced on a blade’s edge, on the thinnest precipice between rage and grief. She could not understand how Findekáno could not feel the same.

“I do not know,” Findekáno repeated softly, but there was firmness to the words. He would not discuss this over Írissë’s dead horse. “Would you like help?”

Írissë laid a hand on Elempilin’s right flank. He would be stiff soon, both with death and the swirling ice which swept always in their wake. She closed her eyes.

“Get him on his side,” she said curtly. “Help me with that.”

Findekáno helped her in rolling Elempilin’s heavy weight onto his side, taking care not to break the gelding’s legs. With this accomplished, Írissë gestured for her brother to grip the horse’s back legs—there were no trees here to which Írissë could bind the body and pull it taut to cut down the middle—and he did. They had done this before, for in Aman Findekáno could often have been persuaded to go on a hunt with his favorite sibling; once they had killed a huge antlered moose and Findekáno had held its great back legs firm while Írissë slit open its belly.

Now Írissë flipped her knife, turning the sharp edge upward, and gripped the too loose skin between Elempilin’s thighs. She tightened her teeth, and hooked the knifepoint beneath it.

And then she cut, carefully, reverently, up Elempilin’s belly, and when she had parted the skin and cut through the sternum, she drew a harsh, steadying breath, and slit the thin remaining membrane between the entrails and the freezing air. Between her and what was left of Elempilin, steam curled in the air. 

Írissë shifted, reaching into the chest cavity, and quietly cut away the diaphragm. The gelding’s large heart was very still, and she brushed it gently with her fingers and thought,  _ Thank you _ . Her gratitude was for Elempilin, and for no one else.

She needed to stand. When she did so, her head spun, and warily Findekáno watched the knife shift in her hand as she stumbled, then corrected her balance with a hiss. He said, “Írissë.”

But Írissë only tightened her jaw, and then she swung a leg over the carcass and gripped the windpipe in her right hand. Elempilin’s throat was slack now—she would not weep, she would  _ not _ —and Írissë needed only one firm movement to sever the windpipe from the rest of him.

A whimper rose from somewhere beneath the ice as she did it, and she looked briefly, frantically downward before she realized that the sound had come from her. Behind her, Findekáno said nothing.

_ Take a moment. _

But she had already taken a moment, and would not afford herself any more. Írissë braced a hand on the carcass’s split ribs and swung her leg back. Then she crouched softly, carefully onto the ice on her knees.

Her hands were trembling now, from cold as much as her ignored grief. Eager to escape the biting air, she folded her hands into Elempilin’s midsection and hissed as looping entrails slid out of the carcass onto her knees. This was a messier evisceration than that of which she would have been previously proud—in another life, she would have sworn her eldest brother to secrecy under threat of her long hunting knife, that she had bloodied herself so clumsily in the routine process of dressing a kill. When Írissë looked to her brother now, he was only watching her with dark, knowing eyes.

She left the entrails in her lap. Írissë set aside her knife, and lifted her sticky, freezing hands to her face.

“How,” she demanded of him, fierce in the rough quiet of the words, “are you not  _ angry?” _

Findekáno tipped his head to the side. Carefully, he laid Elempilin’s back legs against the ice, and he sat back on his heels. “Írissë,” he countered, equally as carefully in his words as he had been in his actions, “What makes you think that I am not angry?”

She could not judge the passage of time anymore, having long ago in her righteous anger lost interest in charting the movement of the stars. But some time ago, Írissë and Elenwë had helped Findekáno grind the bones of his dead mare down to arrowheads. It had been as sentimental an endeavor as it was practical; in the process, Findekáno had lifted his face to the glittering dark sky, and within the edges of his hood Írissë had seen the tautness of teeth-clenching grief in his mouth. She had not seen anger.

Írissë narrowed her eyes. She did not speak.

“I am angry.” Findekáno looked down at his hands. Starlight reflected off the ice and caught in his eyes, illuminating the treelight in them. Írissë studied the angle of his jaw, and saw that it was now set firm. “I do not want to be angry. I do not find it productive, or helpful, and I have discovered that it makes me want to be cruel.”

“They would deserve it.” Írissë tightened her jaw, bit down on the rising volume of the words. “They have done terrible things, Finno, both to us and to—” 

Írissë stilled her tongue. Swallowed. She said haltingly, “I see. I am sorry.”

Findekáno turned out his palms. He smiled minutely. “I am trying not to be angry,” he murmured. “It is difficult.”

Írissë exhaled. Her hands, wet and exposed to the elements, had begun to burn. “I hope you will not think less of me,” she said evenly. “But I do not care, at the moment, whether or not it makes me cruel.”

“I could not think less of you,” replied Findekáno. But of course he could not. Írissë was his favorite. “And I do not find you cruel.”

Írissë pressed her hands again into the open cavity of Elempilin’s belly and found her way beneath the intestines. With her knife, she cored them free and then pulled the rest of the entrails coiling out of the carcass and out of her lap. She said, flatly, “You might.”

“Are you implying that I do not know what you are thinking, at all times?” Findekáno’s mouth turned upward, just slightly. “You have never been subtle, Írissë, in anything that you do. And further than that, you are my sister.” He lifted a hand to tighten the edge of his hood. “I know your heart, and you are not cruel.”

Írissë snorted. “Sentimental,” she condemned. Findekáno laughed, and it was a startling sound. Írissë had heard very little sincere laughter on the Helcaraxë. Generally, once members of their host had begun to fall through the ice, even those who were still capable of laughter had begun to regard it in poor taste.

“What do I have now, besides sentimentality?” Findekáno asked, and then his expression turned somber. “We are gutting our horses on freezing ice, and I refuse to allow myself to only be grateful for the brief warmth of their entrails.”

Írissë, quickly, pulled her hands back from the red opening in the gelding’s midsection. Findekáno sighed.

“I did not mean it that way,” he said, though she did not care. She would think of it endlessly now, that her trembling hands had been drawn to her dead horse for the animal desire for warmth and nothing else. Írissë lifted her chin.

She said, “We will have no horses left, when we come out the other side.” They would be starving, frostbitten, and Írissë could not guarantee they  _ would  _ be coming out on the other side. Some of the strongest and most skilled among them had already been crushed between grinding ice, caught beneath heavy floes, and more than one member of the hosts of their father and of their Arafinwëan cousins had faded in the long stretches of lifeless white between the dark waters. Írissë scowled. “But I will not die here.”

“No,” said Findekáno. “Of course not.” He smiled, showing his teeth. “I will not allow you to do so, if only because leaving me alone with Turukáno and Arakáno for company would indeed make you cruel beyond measure.”

“You would likely die just from the austerity of it all,” Írissë agreed, and matched the tentative upturn of his mouth. Her hands shifted in her lap. “Perhaps you would have to replace my company with that of Nerwen—”

“Terrible,” protested Findekáno suddenly, with a condemning sweep of his knife. His teeth glinted in another silent laugh. “Terrible. Now you are only making threats.”

“Ah, careful,” said Írissë wryly. “She will hear you.”

Findekáno cast a wary look over his shoulder; the silhouette of their tall and unsettling cousin could be seen in the distance, singing a fire into existence to lick at her outstretched hands. She appeared busy enough that their jesting at her expense had gone unnoticed.

“Terrible,” Findekáno asserted again, though more quietly. His eyes were lit briefly with something which was not sadness, and he seemed pleased to have made Írissë smile. “You would not do that to me.”

Írissë shook her head; it was a sobering movement. “No,” she admitted, then sighed. “I suppose I would not.”

Quiet descended on them then. Írissë picked her way through the viscera of her dead horse and again found Elempilin’s heart. It was too large to hold in her cupped hands; she pressed a palm to it and closed her eyes.

_ Take a moment.  _ She knelt for some time with her hand folded against Elempilin’s heart. For that time, Findekáno let her be.

But at last a shifting came from beside her, and it was her eldest brother, again retrieving her mittens from the ice and pressing them at her wrists. Seriously, Findekáno murmured, “You are going to lose your fingers, Írissë.”

Írissë nodded. Truthfully, she had not noticed the absence of the burning, nor the fade of the needling pain in her hands. Neither had she noticed the numbness advancing in the tips of her fingers, or the ice forming beneath her skin. Írissë fumbled now with the cuffs of the thick mittens, but she could not move her hands as she wished to, and she only hissed a frustrated curse. 

There was further shifting beside her, as Findekáno removed his own mittens with his teeth and discarded them in his lap. He said nothing more of the matter—he knew when Írissë preferred silence, and she too was sitting now on her heels with her eyes closed and her face lifted to the star-kindled sky—but he took the mittens gently from her lap and nimbly tugged them over her bloodstained fingers. Then Findekáno replaced his own mittens, but not before he cupped Írissë’s frozen hands between his own and sighed.

And there was an inherent tenderness about the action, quick as it was, which was typical of Findekáno and had always previously prompted Írissë’s teasing about her eldest brother being  _ soft. _ At the moment, Írisse found tenderness most unbearable, and most necessary. Poised as always between terrible grief and terrible anger, the knife turned.

She felt her lower lip tremble, her mouth tear, and then she leaned heavily into her brother to sob drily into his chest. For a moment, Findekáno was still with the opportunity for her to pull away, and then he dragged a heavy arm over Írissë’s shoulders. The weighted pressure of such a thing was a terrible comfort.

“I know,” he murmured, tipping his head so that, between the angles of their hoods and their unbound hair, Írissë was afforded some warm darkness beneath the watchful stars. Anger and grief flooded between them, for without warning or intention Írissë had dropped nearly all guarded aspects of her  _ fëa _ and pressed her mind against his. Findekáno’s breath hitched at the sudden onslaught of emotion, of contact—and then most terribly, Írissë felt the buried simmer of anger and grief within her brother’s mind too. He had not lied, then (though in truth, Írissë had never before known her brother to lie). 

But, gently, Findekáno only whispered: “Yes. I know.” Írissë gasped into his chest, and Findekáno murmured with his second hand cradling the back of her head, “I know, Írissë. But we are going to be alright.”

_ Take a moment. _

It was all that she could be allowed, and it was not enough. Still, when Írissë at last pulled away, her brother swiped carefully at her cheeks and shared a wavering smile.

“We will be alright,” he said. “Of course we will. I will allow nothing less.”

_ It is foolish to make promises that you cannot keep,  _ Írissë did not say. Her brother had always been possessed by the need to fix, to make right, and Írissë had no such fatal inclinations. Still, she wrapped her brittle, mittened fingers around her brother’s and stood, lifting him also to his feet.

“One of us must enlist Nerwen to Sing us a fire,” Írissë said instead. A weak smile played at the corners of her mouth. The tears which her brother had swept away froze thinly on her cheeks. “And since you are so brave and so eager to be helpful, Prince Findekáno Ñolofinwion, I think it ought to be you.”

Elempilin’s heart lay still on the ice. Írissë, for fear of weeping once more and this time being utterly unable to stop, did not touch it again.

**Author's Note:**

> ive been interested for a little while in the elements, and physical manifestations in the text, of nolofinwean anger. i wanted to let aredhel be angry, because i think she deserved to feel angry with the lot she was given, at least a little bit.
> 
> you can find me on my tolkien blog at batshape.tumblr.com


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